Digable Tones: There seems to be some history here!

In February this year, I went through the stressful experience of buying a second-hand metal detector from someone on Facebook. I remember getting him to record a short clip of him using the detector and showing it powering on etc. Thankfully it arrived in one piece and in perfect working order.

For months prior to this my daughter and I watched videos from YouTubers such as The Hoover Boys and Nuggetnoggin. Coins and Jewelry, as always, are a big attraction when first getting into this hobby but something started to happen to me during those first few hunts. Don't get me wrong I still love finding coins and jewellery but I found myself asking questions like, "I wonder how this got here?" or "I wonder who this belonged to?" and slowly the bug starts getting under your skin and causing an insatiable hunger to know more about the history and people of the place you are detecting.

I recall one of my first experiences of this phenomenon. We have 3 exceptionally tall old trees on our property and I had read somewhere that old trees are good places to hunt. After digging one or two square nails I hit a nice repeatable mid-tone. Coin shooters love the high tones but I've learnt that some interesting relics can come from digging mid-tones. This was one such lesson.

I dug down to reveal a rusty looking two-piece button and this is where it gets interesting. So here I am on a farm on the east coast of South Africa and what do I find?

American Great Seal General Service button 1902 - 1917.

I assumed it belonged to a previous resident of the property or perhaps a visitor, it seemed so out of place. I posted it to a metal detecting group and got a comment back saying of "Nice Boer war relic from the American soldiers that came to fight in the war." Boer war? As far as I know, this area isn't known for any Boer War activity.

A month or so later I was methodically detecting one of the cleared cane fields, which are super quiet with almost nothing to detect except the odd bullet or bottle top when I suddenly got another one of those mid-tone signals. By now I had also realised that these can often be "junkers" but as the sun was nearly down I decided to dig it.

British Victorian Era Rifle Regiment Button

Another military button. These take hours of soaking in lemon juice and brushing with a toothbrush before you get to anything that you can take to Google. Even Google couldn't help me with this one. I joined a British militaria collectors forum where I was told that this is just a regular Victorian era " generic other ranks tunic button for any Rifle Regiment". This was for sure my oldest find and most certainly not boring to me.

These military buttons were found about 300m apart on a sugarcane farm on the Kwazulu-Natal, one dates somewhere between 1837 and 1901 and is British, the other is American dating between 1902 and 1945 (it was in use to the end of the second world war I believe).

I also find a lot of harmonica reeds, I only know what these are from watching YouTube videos of people detecting civil war campsites in America.